“Every valuable human being must be a radical and a rebel, for what he must aim at is to make things better than they are.”

Source: Precepts and Judgments (1919), p. 175

Vancouver Province, April 6, 2004: On Taxes.
2004

The Crisis No. III.
1770s, The American Crisis (1776–1783)

As quoted in Marriage Today : Problems, Issues, and Alternatives (1977) by James E. De Burger, p. 444
Variant: I think Dostoevsky was right, that every human being must have a point at which he stands against the culture, where he says, this is me and the damned world can go to hell.
As quoted in The Wordsworth Dictionary of Quotations (1998) by Connie Robertson, p. 270
Context: Therapy isn't curing somebody of something; it is a means of helping a person explore himself, his life, his consciousness. My purpose as a therapist is to find out what it means to be human. Every human being must have a point at which he stands against the culture, where he says, "This is me and the world be damned!" Leaders have always been the ones to stand against the society — Socrates, Christ, Freud, all the way down the line.

Linda
Death of a Salesman (1949)
Context: I don't say he's a great man. Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He's not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must be finally paid to such a person.

Source: Eleven Minutes

We are of course talking here about a man-made system.
The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education (1993)

Reported in Proceedings in honor of Mr. Justice Frankfurter and distinguished alumni at the meeting of the Council, Harvard Law School Association in Cambridge, April 30, 1960.
Other writings